ABSTRACT
More than ten years ago I wrote a paper about writing retreats that explored whether they were in the margin or mainstream of university work. It is time to acknowledge that they are neither. Women account for 90% of people attending writing retreats, but theories used in previous analyses – communities of practice, containment, transtheoretical theory and social writing theory – have not addressed this gendering. In this chapter, I argue that the act of choosing to attend a writing retreat is a declaration of independence (Ahmed, 2017) – independence from a system of values, ideas and assumptions about academic writing that positions women and their writing in the margins. Once there, at a writing retreat, it becomes clear that there are other ways to write and other positionings for women working in universities. The act of attending writing retreats disrupts the systematic marginalization of women and their writing, in which, many women think or feel, they are complicit. It disrupts the patterns of work and living. It disrupts the idea that writing is simply waiting to be done and that a problem with writing is personal, not structural, not gendered. It disrupts the structures that disrupt women's writing.
